As a bonafide Golden Bear from the school across the Bay, I have spent the last three and a half years skillfully avoiding any and all visits to the home of the Tree. However, seeing as how I've been admitted to Leland's magnificent law school I finally made my pilgrimage.

The facilities were, without a doubt, awesome. While the law school building itself isn't much to write home about, the rest of the campus (Memorial Church, etc) is beautiful and pleasing to the eye, due mainly to the uniformity of the place. However, information concerning the campus and Law facilities can be found elsewhere so I'll keep this section brief.

My visit was spur of the moment, so I wasn't able to sit in on any classes or structure my visit in anyway. I pretty much just ambled into the law school and approached two random students who were conversing just outside of the Law Library. Either by luck or the merits of Stanford's admissions process, the two law school students turned out to be invaluable in terms of getting a feel for the school. One of them even took out his schedule to see if he could sneak me into any classes (there were none scheduled for that day, at that time) and then took me on a tour of the clinical facilities. Despite the fact that my guide was bent on acquiring a firm job upon graduation, he'd participated in the Community Law Clinic. While in the belly of the law school, we ran across a group of students and I was able to ask a couple of them a couple of questions concerning student life, atmosphere, and their overall impression of the school.

Overall, the conversations with students resulted in a couple of themes:

-Everybody is your friend! The students I spoke to placed an emphasis on the fact that the school was a very tight-knit community and that people were quick to send out outlines and notes to those who needed them. One student said that, when he missed classes, his mailbox was often inundated with unsolicited lecture notes, etc. Another student nonchalantly stated that he was able to skip out on a large part of one of his courses on account of the student-support system, which leads me to my second observation...

-Everybody is chill! This is a phenomenom that I've noticed in the posts of existing law school students on LSD and XOXO-the professed hate for "gunners" and an overall exultation of the relaxed law student. Well, it's at Stanford too. Not only did some students speak freely of skipping classes, there was a short discussion of the social excommunication that occurs when a student is perceived to be gunnerish. Apparently, some SLSers take to labeling gunners as students who "should have gone to Harvard."

-Everybody gets a job! Students were quick to emphasize the "Stanford" name as an asset in terms of acquiring summer and post-graduate positions. One student, who my guide referred to as a "commie" for his plans to enter the P.I. field, even went as far as to say that grades mattered most for students like him than those who hoped to enter the corporate world. "Everybody here can get a firm job, if they want it."

The visit as a whole was an enjoyable one, mainly because it ended with Professor Lawrence C. Marshall (Law Clinic superstar) offering me some pizza as he walked through the "main" area of the clinical offices.

I was recently told by my roommate that I received an admissions offer from Cornell that mentioned a Dean's Scholarship. I won't be able to actually read the letter until around January 16th. I don't want to miss out on the opportunity for the scholarship, and I'm slightly worried that there's a deadline.

Can anybody post or PM the gist of the proceedure for the Dean's Scholarship (i.e. any deadlines there might be, essay (and topic), etc.)

There is a serious lack of Stanford-related information on this board, so I thought I'd start a thread in which potential, current, and those that know a lot about the Law School and University could coalesce to share information and discuss/debate it.

I'll start it off-

I'm curious about impressions of Stanford as a whole. As a soon-to-be Cal alum, I've been indoctrinated with a slew of misconceptions and insults.

How do the facilities of the law school stack up to the rest of HYS? There weren't many photographs in the viewbook I received, and I haven't found many on the internet.

How would you all rank it in comparison to Harvard and Yale?

What are the big positives of the school and what are the big drawbacks?

Is the school considered to be collegiate, congenial, and a tightknit community?

Is there a disadvantage to the fact that it is on the West Coast, as opposed to the East?

After hearing that I'd be receiving a free SLS shirt, and as a current Cal student, I expected it to be blood red with gaint letters loudly declaring the school's ownership of me. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised by its muted logo and overall neutral (white) color.

Who else is going to be at the ASW Weekend? I'm a bit dissapointed that it conflicts with Boalt, but I'm sure that was a strategic choice.